


lamplight

by ceraunos



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: (debatable it's very light), Asexual Character, Asexuality, Asexuality Spectrum, Comfort, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:15:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23170795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceraunos/pseuds/ceraunos
Summary: He presses his lips against Chandler’s neck and traces a slow circle along his pulse points in time with his own breathing.'Trust me,' he says again, and Chandler nods.~prompt fill for 'why are you still awake'.
Relationships: Joseph Chandler/Emerson Kent
Comments: 9
Kudos: 44





	lamplight

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to quickly clarify that although the tags say asexual it should be sex-positive asexuality/asexual spectrum - there is sex in this, everything is consensual and everyone is happy with it.
> 
> currently unedited/unbeta'd.

Kent lets himself into Chandler’s flat silently, stepping into darkness like blinking and forgetting to open his eyes again. Only the slightest glow from a streetlight under the kitchen curtain flickers faintly enough for him to pick his way over the floor – not that there would be anything left on it, but Kent still isn’t quite familiar enough with the layout to not walk into something anyway, even if he were sober. Which he isn’t, quite.

In his palm the key feels cool and heavy, an unfamiliar weight. He half wonders if he was really meant to use it, whether Chandler had slipped it to him as he’d left the station as some kind of perceived courtesy without really thinking Kent would follow through. It wouldn’t be the first time Kent’s had to wander the minefield of Chandler conjuring up whatever socially appropriate relationship step-of-the-week he thinks they _should_ be doing.

Still, his mug with the chipped handle is on the draining board, there’s a half open book on the side of the sofa he’d been flicking through almost a week ago, and in the cracks he can see himself creeping through the flat without even noticing it. He bites down on the edge of his lip at the realisation, a sudden flurry shooting through his stomach almost possessively.

His hand lingers on the door to Chandler's bedroom nonetheless, a faint itching in the arch of his feet telling him that he could turn around now, give his apologies in the morning for being too drunk, too tired, too whatever, and he knows Chandler wouldn’t say anything. It isn’t fair, though. He thinks of his sister laughing as she bundles him into a cab and forcing Chandler’s address out of his lips before he can tell the driver his own, and knows it isn’t fair to him, or to Chandler, and she wouldn’t forgive him for fucking it up now.

So he turns the handle, swallows, and creeps inside without waking Chandler. Except,

‘Oh,’ he gasps as he stops himself jumping half a metre.

Through the gloom there’s a figure – Chandler, except for a split second Kent’s detective brain had jumped to other conclusions – standing at the foot of the bed, frozen. His hands twitch where they’re white knuckle clutching the end of the duvet.

‘Joe?’ he whispers through the dark, wonders if he should put a light on, except he can almost hear Chandler’s jaw grinding from here and he doesn’t seem to have noticed Kent yet. ‘Joe,’ he says again, and steps forward until his hand is hovering lightly over his forearm, close enough that he can feel the goose bumps raised on bare skin. ‘Why are you still awake?’

It sounds ridiculous even to his own ears, as if he’s found Chandler reading, or watching late night true crime (a horrible habit they’ve both developed), rather than pressing his eyes so tightly closed he must be seeing static and almost shaking with the effort of staying still.

‘Talk to me,’ Kent whispers, and wonders, with the same panic he always does, if it’s the wrong thing to say. Chandler does relax a little, though, into his palm, and Kent takes the opportunity to move behind him, dropping his head onto Joe’s shoulder and running his hands down his arms until his fingers wrap around his wrists, tracing tendons so tight they feel like they might snap in his touch.

‘I can’t let go,’ Chandler says, eventually, and his voice sounds as wrecked as he looks. Kent hums into his skin and waits. ‘It won’t sit even at the sides, it isn’t straight, and I can’t… I can’t make it _right_.’

The first time Kent had watched Chandler make the bed, both of them still wrapped in the hazy nakedness of sunrise, he had marvelled at the preciseness of it; the billowing of the sheet caught like a sail in a sudden wind until it lay flat, the same length hanging over each side as if the bed were a mirror. Tonight it feels like walking into a nightmare.

He presses his lips against Chandler’s neck and traces a slow circle along his pulse points in time with his own breathing.

‘Do you trust me?’

‘I…’

‘It’s ok.’

‘I – don’t know what to do.’

‘Trust me,’ Kent says again, and doesn’t even think about how not so long ago he wouldn’t have even known this was possible.

Chandler nods, and Kent takes that as permission enough to slip his fingers towards Joe’s palms, and then further, slowly, one by one, lacing them through Joe’s until only one hand is gripping the sheet. He takes the free hand and presses it to his lips, holding it there while he untangles the second.

‘Em, it isn’t –’

‘I know, but it will be,’ Kent says and wonders, wonders if… ‘You’re doing so well,’ he murmurs into his knuckles and when Joe shivers in his arms he has his answer.

He turns them around until he’s between Joe and the bed.

‘Keep your eyes closed.’

He does, and Kent keeps hold of him as he walks them back towards the bathroom. He keeps a hold of him too while he reaches into the shower and starts the water, never breaking contact even while he shrugs his own shirt off. Chandler hardly responds, only lets himself be move pliantly and keeps his eyes closed.

‘Can I kiss you?’

‘Please,’ Chandler whispers, almost breathed in silently.

Kent does.

~

Chandler feels the moment Kent steps back, leans in an kisses him again for a second, and then is gone.

 _Wait here,_ he’d said, as he’d pulled Chandler’s jumper over his head, as he’d led him into the shower, as he’d kissed him, and then kissed him again. Chandler waits. He wonders if he should open his eyes, but Kent had said not to and although the moment has passed – he can feel the _do it, do it now_ , tension that had sat under his tongue and pressed against his palms draining away with the water– there’s a strange comfort to staying in the dark.

He drifts, loosing himself in the feeling of every drop hitting his back, and listens to the vague sounds of Kent moving around just beyond his awareness. There’s a faint itching just on the outside of his mind telling him he should be more concerned that he doesn’t know what Kent’s doing, except he can’t quite focus on it long enough for it to get a grasp of him. He feels hazy and loose suddenly; Kent had asked him to trust him, and he…had.

It’s almost a shock when Kent returns, looping a hand into his and pressing his lips to the top of Chandler’s jaw.

‘So good,’ he murmurs and it’s so quiet Chandler isn’t sure he’s meant to have heard it. It sends a shiver shooting down his spine anyway.

He’s conscious that he should probably ask Kent about his night, say hello at the very least, except Kent is running a slow hand down Chandler’s side and he isn’t sure he can find the words right now. Then Kent hums, low and soft in a way that seems to stick in his throat, and Chandler can’t help but look, eyes flickering open to find him staring right at him. Chandler swallows and finds his throat dry.

‘Is this, is this ok?’ Kent asks, and for a reason Chandler will never quite understand, it’s this that brings it washing over him in a wave of cognitive dissonance that reconciles as it breaks; the years of seeing and refusing to see, and yet this is Kent, Kent who never left even when he should have done, and he’s here and it’s impossible and yet, and yet…

‘Thank you,’ Chandler breaths, and hopes it sounds enough like everything he isn’t sure he knows how to put into words yet.

‘That’s alright,’ Kent says, and even thought it isn’t really – it’s so much more than that – he kisses Chandler anyway, so slow and long it leaves him dizzy, trying to remember where one body ends and the other begins. He’s vaguely aware of the water stopping at some point and shivers again but not from any chill.

Kent’s hand wanders lower, from Chandler’s ribs to his hip and then round until his fingers are resting against the inside of Chandler’s thigh, tracing pale flesh. Chandler swallows an almost keening sound, swaying into the touch as a Kent finally stops kissing him. Chandler’s hardly gasped in a single breath though, before Kent is dropping to his knees, his cheek pressing where his fingers were moment’s ago, so close and yet not quite close enough. He gazes up at Chandler, eyes dark and wide.

‘Can I – I’d like to, if you’d like –’

Chandler cuts off Kent’s rambling by winding his fingers through his hair, and tugging, just a little.

‘I’d like that,’ he murmurs and Kent _moans._

Chandler still isn’t sure where all the lines between want and not are for him, but the way Kent looks almost hungry as he presses a kiss into the line of Chandler’s hip, fingers brushing torturously lightly at the base of his cock, he thinks if he could have him here, like this, for the rest of eternity, he’d probably trade everything else in the world for it.

Kent gasps, a sharp inhale of breath that ghosts over Chandler’s skin and makes him jolt and he realises that his fingers have curled tightly into Kent’s hair within him realising, holding on to him desperately.

‘Ok?’ Kent asks, and Chandler can only nod, not sure how to say how much he needs Kent to do something _, anything,_ except then Kent puts his mouth on him, tongue experimentally flicking over the tip of his cock and Chandler’s knees buckle so hard he has to scrabble against the shower tiles to stay standing.

Kent licks a line right down to the base of him and then back again, tonguing deliberately over the tip this time and arousal surges through Chandler so fast it feels like he can’t breathe; everything surging to a holt except for the feel of Kent’s mouth, warm and wet, around him and sucking and he can’t stop his hips stuttering forward.

Kent’s hand splays out against his hip, pressing just enough to stop the juddering motions Chandler’s making.

‘Stay still,’ Kent murmurs, pulling away just enough that he’s peering up at Chandler through his eyelashes, ‘can you do that for me?’

‘Yes,’ Chandler chokes out and forces a couple of steadying breaths until he’s still enough that Kent lets go with his hand, stroking down the inside of his thigh instead.

‘Good, so good,’ he says, and Chandler’s head swims so much from the words, a sudden rush that’s dizzying like an electric fog.

He’s so lost in it that he barely notices Kent has his mouth on him again until he’s taking the whole length of Chandler into the back of his throat and _swallowing_ around him. It takes all of his effort not to tip his hips forward again as he watches Kent’s throat work around him, furious hot arousal pooling low in his stomach, twisting with the need to release.

When Kent hums, pleased and satisfied around him with a glorious low vibration, Chandler nearly comes on the spot, vaguely aware of a desperate moan tumbling from him. Kent hums again and his eyes shutter closed, only to fly open again, not wanting to miss anything. He’s so close, so soon, and he wants to hold off – to be _good_ a distant voice in his mind prompts – except Kent’s fingers are still tracing tight circles over tops of his thighs and he’s pulled back enough so his tongue is tracing the skin at the tip of Chandler’s cock while his other hand strokes over the rest of him and Chandler is shaking with a blinding _need._

‘So good, so good for me,’ Kent keeps murmuring and it washes over Chandler in waves sending shivers through him over and over again. ‘Just right, like this, yes,’ he’s saying, and the knot of arousal tightens, pushing to the very limits of Chandler’s being.

Then Kent is pulling away, and standing, and Chandler hears himself whine at the loss, except the sound gets lost against Kent’s mouth as he kisses him. Chandler can taste himself against Kent’s tongue and reels in the unfamiliar intimacy of it.

‘Come for me?’ Kent says and it’s both a question and not, and Chandler swallows thickly around the words as his cock jumps in Kent’s hand.

Kent strokes once, twice more, as Chandler gasps, the sound getting lost between open messy kisses, so desperate for release and yet still scrambling against the edge to find it.

‘Come,’ Kent says again, and bites down on Chandler’s lip, sharp enough that the unexpectedness of it rockets through Chandler dragging him from the heady fog of arousal until he feels the moment of orgasm like an explosion on the tip of a pinprick; the surge of arousal unknotting as he spills into into Kent’s fingers so strong it’s like he can _taste_ it.

He comes back to himself with Kent’s hands stroking over his shoulders and down his back, tracking the same repetitive lines. Chandler focuses on the gentle, calming motion of it until his breathing evens out again.

Kent doesn’t say anything, but just kisses Chandler slow and sweet and so entirely different to a moment ago that Chandler melts into it without even thinking.

It’s only when Kent shifts to cup the back of Chandler’s head, thumb stroking over his cheek, that Chandler feels the length of him pressing still hard against his hip.

‘Oh,’ he breaths, reaching down to find Kent lazily stroking himself.

‘It’s ok, you don't have to...’

‘I’d like to, though,’ Chandler says, even though he isn’t entirely sure what it is he wants to do. He settles for lacing his fingers through Kent’s until they’re stroking in time, and from the bitten back moan Kent gives he must be doing something right.

‘Won’t take long,’ Kent pants.

‘Next time I’ll learnt to do what you did.’

‘Ah, oh god,’ Kent gasps, ‘you don’t have to –’

‘I’d like to.’

‘F-fuck, ok. Yes. Oh god, you’ll be – ah - you'll be perfect at it,’ Kent pants out between desperate moans.

Chandler can feel Kent’s hand at his neck, flexing tightly and knows he must be close.

‘Only for you,’ Chandler mutters and knows it’s the truth.

He experimentally twists his wrist and almost has to catch Kent as keens forward, crying out as he comes.

‘Oh god, that – I – oh,’ Kent gasps brokenly as he presses his face into Chandler’s shoulder. He mumbles something else Chandler doesn’t quite catch and then laughs, leaning back. ‘We’re going to need to shower again.’

Chandler finds himself laughing too, clinging to Kent as cold water suddenly splashes down on them both.

~

Kent watches Chandler carefully as he steps out of the bathroom, looping a finger through one of Chandler’s. In the dim glow of the bedside light everything seems hazy and golden, cut through only by the sudden spike of worry tugging at Kent’s chest.

Chandler seems to stand still a second, cataloguing, and Kent waits for the tell-tale stiffening of his shoulders, the setting of his jaw that says he isn’t comfortable but he’s going to ignore it as long as he can anyway. It never comes, though.

Instead, Chandler just stares it him for a moment and then tugs him forward, lifting a corner of the bed – made as best Kent could even though he’s sure it isn’t even close to how Chandler does it – like it’s nothing.

‘Come to bed?’

‘Ok,’ Kent says, climbing in after Chandler and feels something loosen inside him as Chandler tugs his head down to his chest.

They’re quite for a long while, Kent almost thinks Chandler might be asleep except for the occasional twitching of the fingers still twisted through his.

‘How was your sister?’ Chandler asks eventually.

‘Fine, she’s seeing someone apparently.’

‘Oh?’

‘Mm, he seems nice.’

‘Good.’

‘Mm.’

‘Can I? Chandler says after a moment, gesturing to the light switch.

Kent yawns into his chest and hums. He’s almost half way asleep before Chandler shuffles, twisting them until he’s staring at Kent through the darkness.

‘Thank you,’ he says, so soft and full it seems to settle a moment over them.

‘Anytime,’ Kent says. He hopes Chandler knows that it means _every time._

**Author's Note:**

>  **me:** decides to write something that’s short and a bit sad and inspired by my own Real Lived Experiences™️  
>  **also me:** gets freaked out by the whole real lived experiences™️ thing instantly and turns it into 2000 words of smut instead.
> 
> thank you to sarah my love for the prompt x
> 
> come scream with me [on tumblr](https://ceraunos.tumblr.com/) x


End file.
